Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., rises to join House Republican members to object to confirming the Electoral College votes from Pennsylvania during a joint session of the House and Senate to confirm the Electoral College votes cast in November’s election, at the Capitol, early Thursday, Jan 7, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
ST. LOUIS (KMOV.com) — Following the chaos at the Capitol on Wednesday, thousands of people in Missouri called for Senator Josh Hawley to resign or be expelled from the Senate. A petition online garnered over 65,000 signatures as of Thursday afternoon.
Alexandria Gray signed the petition early Thursday morning. She believes Hawley’s refusal to accept the election results incite violence and are harmful to the country.
“Senator Hawley has not yet taken any stance on Civil Rights, on welfare and poverty for Missourians,” Gray said. “To see him go out there and represent Missourians the way he did yesterday, is mind-blowing, we need someone that’s going to stand for us in Missouri.”
For weeks, Senator Hawley has backed President Trump’s repeated claims that the election results are inaccurate, a claim he double-downed on Thursday, saying he will “never apologize for giving voice to the millions of Missourians and Americans who have concerns about the integrity of our elections. That’s my job, and I will keep doing it.”
Gray is the founder of “Equality Right Now”, a group that pushes for equality, mainly for people of color, and is based in Franklin County. Over the summer, Gray said she lead several peaceful protests. She doesn’t understand why Wednesday’s event had to turn so violent.
“To know that I stand for peace when I do go out there and I promote solely that, to watch the people that are normally shouting at me that I’m in the wrong, to be the ones to terrorize the Capitol, just took all my words, I’m still baffled about it,” Gray said.
Sen. Josh Hawley gestures toward a crowd of supporters of President Trump outside the U.S. Capitol to protest the certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral college victory Wednesday. Some demonstrators later breached security and stormed the Capitol. (Credit: AP)
Also calling for removal was Congresswoman Cori Bush, of St. Louis, who on Wednesday called for expulsion of members of the House and Senate who “incited” the “domestic terror attack.” She later tweeted Hawley had “blood on [his] hands.”
Thursday, News 4 spoke with Shamed Dogan, Missouri State Representative for the 98th District. Dogan said he regrets voting for Senator Hawley in 2018. He calls Hawley’s recent behavior, embarrassing and believes refusing the election results is an attack on our democracy.
“Senator Hawley has been inexcusably egging this sentiment on that the election was stolen that it was illegitimate and you can’t tell people over, over and over again that election was illegitimate and stolen and expect people not to react violently so I blame a lot of this on President Trump,” Dogan said.
Meanwhile, Republican state Rep. Justin Hill, R-Lake St. Louis, was in the nation’s capital encouraging Congress to reject President-elect Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory, and he lays no blame on Hawley for the incident.
“I think those agitators who broke windows and assaulted Capitol Police, those were not the same people,” Hill said Thursday. “Those were opportunists, those were anarchists and that is very, very upsetting to me and upsetting to the USA. All those people who want to see an investigation into election integrity issues, that’s what they want to see, they did not want to see what occurred yesterday.”
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